OMM Newsroom
A 74-year-old Italian man convicted over a kidnapping by a far-left militant group in the 1970s has escaped house arrest in Argentina and is on the run, according to BBC World.
Leonardo Bertulazzi used a harness to abseil from a fifth-floor balcony in Buenos Aires. His escape was not immediately detected because he had altered his electronic ankle monitor to keep transmitting body-temperature readings after he removed it.
Bertulazzi was being monitored by Argentina’s Ministry of Security as he awaited extradition to Italy. The device recorded the wearer’s body temperature and movements, and officials became suspicious when it remained stationary.
When officers entered the apartment in central Buenos Aires, Bertulazzi had disappeared, but the ankle monitor was still there. Given his past in the Red Brigades and his bomb-making skills, police called explosives experts in case the device had been rigged to detonate, Argentine newspaper Clarín reported.
The experts found that Bertulazzi had tampered with the monitor to stop an alarm from sounding when he removed it. A nationwide manhunt is under way.
Italian media reported that his extradition had been imminent after his final appeal was rejected.
Bertulazzi spent decades as a fugitive after being sentenced in absentia in Italy for the 1977 kidnapping of Italian naval engineer Pietro Costa. He was first arrested after entering Argentina from neighbouring Chile in 2002 using a false passport.
He was granted refugee status in 2004 and lived freely in Argentina until his re-arrest in 2024, when current right-wing President Javier Milei took office. Milei’s government said at the time that “Bertulazzi is responsible for crimes that undermined democratic values and the lives of many victims”.
Bertulazzi belonged to the Red Brigades, which kidnapped and killed several state officials during the 1970s and 1980s. He was part of the group’s Genoa section, which seized Costa on a street and held him for 81 days before receiving a large ransom.
The proceeds from the kidnapping were used to buy a flat in Rome. In 1978, the Red Brigades used it in the kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, the group’s most notorious crime.
Moro was abducted after his car was ambushed as he travelled to the opening of parliament. He was held in the flat for 54 days, then shot. His body was left in the boot of a Renault in central Rome.
